Pro-Mark Japanese white oak drumsticks are balanced and carefully crafted using hand-selected white oak. Grown in the mountainous regions of Japan, this particular species of oak is a harder wood than hickory and will take more wear, tear, and punishment. It resists chipping and wearing soft. Made with Pro-Mark's exclusive Millennium II manufacturing process, each stick is hand-finished and hand-inspected. The result is a strength and durability no other stick can match.

Lots of great things to say here. Besides being very well balanced, consistent, and great in the hands, they are also the most durable and natural feeling sticks on the market. Read complete review

Lots of great things to say here. Besides being very well balanced, consistent, and great in the hands, they are also the most durable and natural feeling sticks on the market.

When I go to the store I find myself comparing sticks from different brands to find the pair(s) I like. Not so much with Pro Mark as they are very consistent from pair to pair. A set can last me up to 6 months or more.

The essence of oak is very dense. Your rides will clang with authority and your crashes will ring for days. They are loud sticks. However you can still get delicate response for snare rolls and soft passages. It's how you use your hands.

I only have one reservation : and I must throw a CAUTION flag out - be very careful with practicing often with these sticks. After some medical attention, partly due to the dense nature of these sticks, I have developed SEVERE Carpal and Ulnar tunnel in both hands/wrists. It is due to the shock being more severe with such a dense wood. Had I been using hickory (a much lighter wood), the shock would not have been as extreme. Now I must take Ibuprofen before and after shows, and ice my arms so they do not flare up. I wear wrist braces at night. This is not purely the sticks' fault. I would practice for 3 hours or more without a break and without proper warm-ups. I sliced up my ligaments pretty bad and caused some real agitation on my nerves.

If you plan to play a lot with these, save them for the gig. Use hickory or budget-friendly 2nds to practice with. As long as they roll on a table, they'll be fine.

I now use Zildjian Anti-vibes for my CTS. It's all I can use at this point, with the occasional light hickory 5A with electrical tape wrapped around it (for shock absorption).

If I could do it all over again I'd practice with hickory but I'd use Shira Kashi all day long if my arms weren't in such bad shape. They are great sticks but unfortunately for me the oak is too dense for my arms to handle. I do use proper stick technique. They will tear you up!

Fantastic sticks - but save them for the gig.

VS

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Japanese "Will-Not-Please" Drumsticks

I bought two sets of these after breaking a couple pairs of their hickory sticks over the course of a month. Three songs into a gig, the first stick gave. Split at the...Read complete review

I bought two sets of these after breaking a couple pairs of their hickory sticks over the course of a month. Three songs into a gig, the first stick gave. Split at the tip and hit my guitarist in the back of head. The next stick, a song after. The second set, both sticks split the next day. I went through two sets of what are supposed to be the most durable sticks in less than 2 days, not to mention I'm one of the lightest hitters I know! The hickory sticks quality, puts these to absolute shame. I will never in a million years play Promark White Oak again. I'm still in shock at how lousy those sticks were.

I bought two sets of these after breaking a couple pairs of their hickory sticks over the course of a month. Three songs into a gig, the first stick gave. Split at the tip and hit my guitarist in the back of head. The next stick, a song after. The second set, both sticks split the next day. I went through two sets of what are supposed to be the most durable sticks in less than 2 days, not to mention I'm one of the lightest hitters I know! The hickory sticks quality, puts these to absolute shame. I will never in a million years play Promark White Oak again. I'm still in shock at how lousy those sticks were.

These drumsticks are great. They get a higher tone out of my snare which I like. They sound great on all of my cymbals. Only con I've found so far is that they seem to bend when you hit a drum or cymbal hard. You can really feel all of the vibrations in your hand from the drumsticks. Overall they are really good. They sound really good.

These sticks are very lively, they do what you ask of them. They are well balanced and very durable. I am self taught and don't know all the tricks and proper this and proper that, but i do know that with these sticks (above all others i have tried)have made it a whole lot easier figuring a lot of it out. Pro Mark makes a great line of sticks and in my trials i have found these to be the best!!! More "BANG" for the buck...

After 20 years of using Promark hickory sticks I decided to switch to Japanese oak in my normal size (5A nylon) to see if they would last longer than hickory. I really wanted to like these oak sticks. They feel great in my hands and I like the slightly heavier weight for rim shots. They play really nicely and don't get nicked up by cymbals like other woods, that much is true. However, after about 1 hour at practice with my band I noticed that the nylon tip had come off of one of my new sticks. I had been rotating between four pairs to break them in evenly, so none of the sticks had much visible wear. I've shredded through hundreds of Promarks in my lifetime and the nylon tips never come off (can't say the same for Vic Firth). I figured it was a fluke and was still feeling pretty good about the oak sticks after day one. I then used the same eight sticks at a show that weekend and broke two more sticks. One snapped off just below the tip and the other split right through the middle on an angle that I rarely see. That's 3 broken sticks after about 2 hours playing time total, or an average of 30 minutes playing time per stick since I was rotating four pairs. I've never had Promark's hickory sticks go that fast. I still love Promark and will always use their sticks because they are the most consistent and well-balanced on the market. I wouldn't buy into the idea that oak will last longer than hickory though. I'm most likely going back to hickory, but I'll use the remaining oak sticks because I do like the feel.

Pro-Mark has been the brand I have been using for years and with good reason. They are high quality sticks and last forever, depending on how hard you play. I am not a super rough player, so one pair could last months provided nothing else happens to them. I wouldn't recommend any other kind.